If this is true (h/t), it represents one of the more cynical actions I’ve seen from law enforcement, whose job it it to serve and protect, in a long, long time. According to Harry Siegel, cops in New York City are re-routing aggressive, drunken individuals picked up in parks across the city down to the protest site, taking advantage of the open-source nature of the protests.

The number of non-participants taking advantage of the resources that the activists have provided — free food, clothing, tarps and sleeping bags, hand-rolled smokes and even books, not to mention a sense of protection from the police, who have increasingly left the park to protect itself – has exploded over the past week, and is threatening to define the occupation itself and overshadow its political and social ambitions. Despite those resources, “spanging” (spare-changing, or panhandling) at Zuccotti has become commonplace, as have fights, near-fights and open-air drug sales [...]

The NYPD seems to have crossed a line in recent days, as the park has taken on a darker tone with unsteady and unstable types suddenly seeming to emerge from the woodwork. Two different drunks I spoke with last week told me they’d been encouraged to “take it to Zuccotti” by officers who’d found them drinking in other parks, and members of the community affairs working group related several similar stories they’d heard while talking with intoxicated or aggressive new arrivals.

The NYPD’s press office declined to comment on the record about any such policy, but it seems like a logical tactic from a Bloomberg administration that has done its best to make things difficult for the occupation — a way of using its openness against it.

“He’s got a right to express himself, you’ve got a right to express yourself,” I heard three cops repeat in recent days, using nearly identical language, when asked to intervene with troublemakers inside the park, including a clearly disturbed man screaming and singing wildly at 3 a.m. for the second straight night.

“The first time I’ve heard cops mention our First Amendment rights,” cracked one occupier after hearing a lieutenant read off of that apparent script.

Emphasis mine. I don’t think that the protest movement would have much of a problem using some of their bounty to share with people who are troubled or homeless; they are the 99% too, after all. But this rises to the level of the cops seeding the protest site with unruly, aggressive, perhaps mentally ill types. And I’m sure they’re ready to point afterwards at the conduct they helped to instigate. They’re using Zuccotti Park almost as a holding pen for types that would normally spend the night in the city lockup or drunk tank.

I’m really no stranger to this in Los Angeles. For the last decade I’ve lived in cities that have been more welcoming to the homeless than their neighbors, and as a result, more of the homeless gravitate here. But in addition to that, there have been documented cases of other beach cities and local hospitals dumping the homeless in high-service areas like Skid Row downtown, and some of the other Westside cities. “Take it to Skid Row” is similar to “Take it to Zuccotti.” As Digby writes, “This appears to be a conscious effort to sabotage the movement. And it may work.”

If Occupy Wall Street makes it through all of this, with so many forces arrayed against it, the movement will prove itself quite durable.

Stay klassy, Ray Kelly. And enjoy it while you can.
In your second career in counter-intelligence, you might have heard of something called `blowback’.
Residents of Lower Manhattan might not be too amused if they knew what you’re up to.

In terms of those NYPD “referrals” to Zucotti Park who appear to be experiencing some kind of mental health or substance abuse crisis, according to the website of the NYC mental health services, there is a program called LIFENET which “has authorized linkages with the 23 mobile crisis teams and Emergency Medical Services (EMS).” More info, including the phone number, is here.

I wonder if that was done at Occupy Sacto. On Saturday there were 200-300 homeless folks lined up to get food from some weird over the top Xtian organization. They were forced to listen to a sermon before getting their meal. It was so full to the brim with guilt, it was hard to bare. As I was walking to the area with OS, one of them tried to kick me. sort of. The more I visit OS, the more homeless mentally ill people are there. And the fewer demonstrators.

M’eh. All they are doing is discrediting themselves. People are watching full on now and they continue to behave in an unAmerican fashion. People are taking notice. I just hope the police authored violence and injuries can be kept to a minimum.

Follow up to that is that Occupy WS needs to start videoing these folks and asking them who sent them, and then posting it on youtube.
A video with just a few people admitting who directed them to the park would go viral. And even the corporate media will put it on (simply for ratings, no other reason).

The (sic) so called authorities are trying to force the Occupiers to be a Social welfare agency when most of the folks there are not equipped to handle the mentally ill and especially the aggressive mentally ill. The police know just what they’re doing and I’m sure studying to see if this can be deployed elsewhere to break this up. The cops and the other very well paid Civil servants are the 1′s armor and weapons.

Are the Cops nuts instead of arresting a public drunk or drug dealer they send them to the park? These people are either warned to move on or arrested by sending them to the park I think the police have just made themselves liable for anything these guys do.
Imagine if the police sent ALL the crooks to a park where a kid was having his birthday! Normally police if they don’t arrest you give a warning and tell you to go if you have been drinking but often they ask for ID and run your name through the system before saying you can go.
How many police invited guests have warrants on them?

That’s actually a wonderful suggestion. There should be folks within the security groups within the OWS movement that have access to things like Social Services or mental health professionals numbers so that if someone does need “help” they can get that help and if help isn’t available then it might not be so terrible to see some 99er placards that point out that the system left him/her behind.

There is so much unjustice and so little time. . .After 25 years of Reagan doctrine, throwing the mentally ill on the streets, and with a hard-core of drug/alcohol addicts also living on the streets in our country, it is no wonder that people are gravitating to #OWS as a safe haven and source of food/comfort and compassion while at the same time the police, hospitals and other interventionists (using kind words here) are also happy to unburden themselves by pushing their attendant problems onto the movement.

It is more than a full-time job to manage the problems that come from this. Anyone who has spent any time at any Occupation can talk about what they have done, what the group has done to intervene in the most humane ways while trying to integrate solutions so that the system does not break down. I am sure there are some inhumane stories as well.

Occupys are microcosms of the larger society, and that means they will be targets for this kind of dumping, as it has been a long-time tried and true response by the PTB. The problems are very difficult. Who wants to take that on when there is so much other work to do?

There is no substitute for social services, and there are fewer and fewer of those while the problems are growing daily, even as the planet now has 7 B people on it.

We have to come to terms with the problems, as much as any of the other problems we are working to solve. Not glamorous work nor for the feint of heart.

I’m not surprised by this at all. I’ve been expecting adversarial parties to start giving paying homeless to disrupt GAs and generally cause problems with occupations. A lot of homeless are too far gone to rationally identify with the 99%.

Okay, this is from a psychologist with AMPLE crisis intervention experience. OWS is experiencing what many west coast cities did starting in the eighties when the mental hospitals began releasing many of the long term hospitalized. ( we also experienced the exact same thing with the “Peaceworks” occupation in Seattle during the first gulf war.) The homeless mentally ill will go first and foremost where they are comfortable and feel safe. Their aggressive behavior may or may not be transient, and may well be part of their condition. OWS security needs to become a social triage unit too. They already wear lots of hats, but the fact is the Police are treating them like a social service agency, and they’ll have no choice but to behave like one for the time being. It’s also good PR.
They need a social triage team, and they need some basic crisis intervention techniques, and a system to escort obviously drunk or ill people while in Zuccotti park. Best thing to do is calmly find out what their basic needs are (food, sobering up, some sleep,) and get them met as quickly and efficiently as possible. Drinking needs to be prevented. As odious as open air drug sales may be, violence is far more closely associated with alcohol use. A security liaison who has access to a community resource directory and authority to issue cab fare or call for an ambulance is also going to be important. If you can, get them fed, get them rested, and get them off to the closest appropriate agency, ASAP. If you want them to leave, give ‘em a job or task, and make it difficult to get drunk and loaf around. It may not be true, but you are gonna hafta tell ‘em that if they want to stay, they’ll have to pull their own weight. Some will surprise you and pull it together in order to stay in a safe environment. The others who haven’t taken advantage of the social service liaison, and who don’t want to interrupt their pathologies in exchange for safety will move on because it’s a hassle, and those darn protesters won’t leave ‘em alone, always wantin’ ‘em to do something.
Like I said, we had this experience in Seattle in ’91.

As someone who has worked in NYC nonprofit sector for almost two decades, I KNOW FOR A FACT that there are people referring the hungry to the OWS “soup kitchen.” A few days ago, I was told by someone I trust that they are sending recently released Rikers Island inmates to the OWS site.

Rikers Island is the largest penal colony in the world and is also the de
facto “warehousing” of the homeless and the mentally ill.

Have conservative religious groups (all religious groups are conservative, regardless of their speil) been recruited, paid . . . to forment Occupy dissent in this manner?

What a tactic . . . I’d sure like to know who that Xtian group WAS, what church, are they local, what are their contacts to city officials and local developers who control the City Council and County Board Of Supes . . . . Imagine an Occupy march on the church that DID this last Saturday . . . *G* I’d sure as shit go ;-)

Thanks darkcycle. I talked with the medical tent in seattle and they already have policy, plans, and teams prepared for these scenarios. We have two occupations ongoing now – one downtown at Westlake, and one at Seattle Central Community College on Cap Hill.

While it may be a (big) strain on OWS to provide any care for the homeless/mentally ill, who are it seems being treated literally as trash by the PTB, if these people can be helped in any way this becomes another way to show the difference between Occupy/the 99% and the ruling class.

“The wealthy and their political and police servants treat people as trash, while Occupy cares for them as fellow human beings. Whose vision for America would you rather join and live in?” That would be a pretty compelling story, one which would be hard to corrupt or co-opt. (Not to use the homeless/mentally ill as simply a PR tool, anymore than Scott Olsen – the point is to recognize and honor the pain being borne by allowing it to bring the most good.)

Clearly the important things are to not let these people be used as human dispersal munitions, to offer them as much help as possible, and of course not let this next form of attack on Occupy succeed. But like the more obvious urban warfare attacks before it, the difficulty of living through this has the benefit of making clear the character of the Occupy movement, which is to everyone’s good.

p.s. By using Occupy as a social services organization the police are de facto validating them as a quasi-governmental agency – and the NYPD’s preferred choice for patient care over those run by NYC itself.

(Just trying to find a “when life gives you lemons make lemonade” bright side to this that isn’t “when life gives you homeless people make Soylent Green.”)

Do you realize your common humanity with the homeless, or are you so wrapped up in the fantasy of exploiting these unfortunate folks for the purposes of helping Occupy Wall Street “win” that you make them into a “PR tool”?

I guess you (a psychologist) never really identified with your patients in any deeply human, empathic way. Or at least you seem preoccupied with using the “other” frame to use them as PR tools as EV did. Your recommendations betray your belief that the homeless are lazy drunkards who will be driven off if given any sort of job or responsibility. Tell that to the folks living like the characters in the Grapes of Wrath. Careful. Your lofty superioritis is showing.

What I am not hearing is a call for “participatory design” using the voices of the disenfranchised in finding solutions to their difficulties. It is a matter of democracy and a matter of respect for the individual, and perspective taking.

An important point Tom, and one that should not be forgotten. I liked some of the suggestions people made about OWS trying to provide some rudimentary “services” for homelessness, drug/alcohol addiction and the mentally ill. I suspect there has been some of that right along. Of course, it’s also important to recognize there are no resources or facilities to provide these services, by the people of OWS, camping in a park. Especially while the NYPD seems to be directing large numbers of those most in need of services to the park. For the very purpose of disrupting the protests. Protests that are, certainly in part, to bring light to the cutting of services to prevent and treat homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness.

It’s an incredibly cynical thing when you think about it, but this is how a broken and corrupt political/economic system continues, unchecked.

So, is that the way it’s done now? (or still done?) If you stand up, if you speak out, if you dare to exercise the freedoms that our country aspires to uphold, and has rightly been so proud of for all these years?

If you speak out, if you protest, if you stand up for a less corrupt government, or to protect the environment, or for the poor, or any number of critical issues afflicting our planet… Unless it has a corporate seal of approval…YOU GET KICKED IN THE FUCKING TEETH.

I’m tired of it. Too many of these so called “leaders” in our corporate/media/government ignore, deny, manipulate, blame, deflect, spin/market/propagandize bullshit their way out of any actual responsibility to be part of the solutions. At this point, the idea of “leadership” has become an absurd joke.

The thing that really bothers me is the continual blaming of people who have the courage to stand up, in peaceful, problem solving ways to try to seriously address the problems and challenges we face.

Mayor Bloomberg fancies himself a competent and capable, problem solving leader. At least that’s what the spin is anyway. By allowing this nonsense, by the NYPD to continue, he is showing what kind of “leader” he really is.

I think darkcycle’s suggestions weren’t so much about “driving them off” as in separating the wheat from the tares (the latter of which could include agents provocateur: somebody the cops gave $20 to with the message “Go to Zucotti and start a fight, and I’ll give you another $20 later”).

Darkcycle’s suggestions would be a neat, nonviolent way of seeing if the persons sent OWS’ way by the cops (and sent with malefic intent, by the way) can be integrated into the OWS and become productive (or at least non-harmful) parts of it.

I am very easily described as part of the one percent.
Overall I have been one of the most fortunate persons to ever live on this planet. (Henry the Eighth might trade me lives just for the girlfriends I’ve had and the meals I’ve eaten).In a perfect world…
I’m embarrassed for us as a group, as a community, as a phylum of terra-flora. We’ve had far more than 6000 years of recorded civilization over most of the planet. We’ve soiled our nest like a bunch of rats or overgrazed ruminants. Worse, the largest group of college educated human beings in history, have sat by and watched television while the most aggressive, predatory beasts, in all of history, (us and U.S., pretty much all of western society), have made “rape, pillage and sack”, into a marketable commodity. (We currently can trade questionable financial instruments over our cell phones).

We don’t learn from our mistakes!

We haven’t learned how to prevent bullies from just taking what they want!

We haven’t learned how to take care of the old and crippled! (The homeless are the other 1%).

We must learn to use the resources we still have to move us all forward in a practical manner.

We must preserve what is beautiful and honest and true!

We have proven we can do this as individuals and society has accomplished all these things over and over over time.

What can we do to pull it all together and look like we know what we are doing?

p.s. By using Occupy as a social services organization the police are de facto validating them as a quasi-governmental agency – and the NYPD’s preferred choice for patient care over those run by NYC itself.

DING!

Furthermore, by in essence knowingly sending those who are in need of professional help to a place where they are arguably far less likely to find it than at available locales like, say, Bellevue, the cops are setting themselves up for the mother of all lawsuits, one would think.

“participatory design” sounds like “participatory art”
Forgive me for sounding like an old hippie but The Experiment in Culture Building at Burning Man looks like a very viable route to choose.
As an example is the very first post in this comment thread. Here is a way for the folks at OWS, (who with and without knowing are using some parts of the Burning Man culture in their encampments worldwide). to use the internet to reach out to the bottom 1% with resources for assistance and help currently available to the disenfranchised.

I think an unofficial “google(verb)vote” web site might be a fun idea. Where you could go and vote,once, on any issue you cared to post.

I wonder how many calls to the mobile teams could be made before somebody would discover that there just aren’t sufficient funds available for that particular service. I do hope OWS try to use the mobile crisis services–seems absolutely appropriate, particularly since police are dumping people in crisis at the park..